Category Archives: Boat work – Trisalu 37

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We have now joined the ranks of sailors with the ability to shoot beautiful aerial views!

Deviating from the usual course once again, the drone we chose to purchase is the DJI Mavic Pro instead of the very popular Phantom 4. The Mavic Pro, when it is folded down it can just about fit in the size of your palm, meaning we’ll never have to second guess if we want to bring it out with us as we explore each location we sail to.

So far we’ve been having fun playing with it at the marina, steering through the maze of the channel and floating over all the boats in storage. We have a long way to go before finessing a fluid movement with the camera, but so far it has been a great addition to our camera gear.

In this episode I go over the new awning I just made for our cockpit, a simple design with no framing to adhere to. Also, while putting our headsails in place, we realize our staysail doesn’t have a good fit and we take measurements for hunting down a good used one to replace it.

Cheers from the WATER!!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming.

There’s nothing for me to sand or paint right now, so it must be time to sew!

Two big items we need done before leaving the marina are making a new mainsail cover and an awning for the cockpit. Tackling the hardest one first, I went with the sail cover. Since we were starting from scratch and yours truly was doing the work, we decided to go with a stack pack, where the cover never fully comes off, but instead is unzipped to allow the sail in and out. I’ve never attempted anything like this before, but luckily Sailrite makes a very helpful step by step video on building one. We’re making a few tweaks, so ours won’t be exactly the same, but it has helped me with the most important parts.

Also in this episode, we spend a little quality time with our friends Jeremy and Courtney of s/v Teho. We’d gotten to know them at the marina just after the new year, and were now able to reconnect after they’ve arrived back from the Bahamas. Their stay in Indiantown is a short one though, so we made the most of it with a night out to Waterway Cafe and Rocco’s Tacos in Palm Beach.

Cheers from the WATER!!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming.

‘Why aren’t you going to paint your hull?’ ‘If you’re going to leave it bare, you should at least shine it up’. ‘You’re in for a ton of corrosion if you leave your hull bare’.

These are just a sample of the questions and comments we’ve been getting through our last few videos, so we thought it was time to publicly address the issue. Our hull is staying bare aluminum, and we *want* it that way. Keep reading as to our reasons why, and to answer all the questions you may have about why there is no longer paint on the side of our boat.

In this episode we also dig our mainsail out of storage to see how it fits on the boat, and Matt goes over our plans for how we’re going to lay out our deck hardware. With all the changes we’ve made to Elements, the previous set-up is no longer going to work for us.

Cheers from the WATER!!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming.
To join the Patreon ranks, please visit http://www.patreon.com/mjsailing

After holding on to this specific boat name for 9 years now, we are finally able to use it as we rename our boat. Going through a complete refit, it seems only fitting she comes out of it with a new name as well.

We prep the boat for her new name and decals, do a big reveal, and explain how we came up with it and what it means to us. Even though we’re not yet on the water we still had a renaming ceremony and I found a way to appease the gods of the wind and the sea.

Stay tuned for the next episode where we make our big splash!

Cheers from the work yard!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming. To join the Patreon ranks, please visit http://www.patreon.com/mjsailing

We’re so close to getting in the water, and yet still so far. It’s been a hectic time for us as we try to finish all the last projects before splashing.

With our centerboard dropped we had the well soda blasted (even though I accidentally say sandblasted about 5 times), which gives Matt and I the opportunity to get fresh coats of aluminum primer and barrier paint into the centerboard well. A much harder job for Matt than for me.

With the Awl Grip applied it was time to go back and reapply our Kiwi Grip non skid that had initially been applied in October, but sanded down for reapplication. I taped off the cabin top and combing, and we spent one morning getting a nice new coat on half the boat.

Matt gets working in the anchor locker to have a nice clean area for our chain to drop in so we don’t have metal sitting on metal, and I have a little whine session about how our decals came back wrong. All in all though, things are getting done and we’re moving closer to the water every day!

Cheers from the work yard!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming. To join the Patreon ranks, please visit http://www.patreon.com/mjsailing

It is finally done! Muahahahaha (evil laugh)… The painting is finally done!

After 9 weeks of work, removing all our old Petit (2 part EZ Poxy) paint, building up layer after layer of primer, and trying my hand at Awl Grip for the first time, our paint on the cabin top and cockpit is now complete. 3 coats overall, and she’s looking good!

We also had the travel lift come to hoist us up a few feet so we could reblock to be able to remove the old paint and put new paint where the blocks had been sitting. The centerboard also gets removed for our painting…and it’s our first chance ever to see it!

Cheers from the work yard!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming. To join the Patreon ranks, please visit http://www.patreon.com/mjsailing

We may not always get to work on what projects we want *when* we want, but there is always something to be done on this boat

My Awl Grip top coats have been halted due to extreme heat, but we still have plenty to keep ourselves busy! After receiving our rudder back with a new welded posts and some added bushings, Matt’s work on the linear drive is finished and he gets a chance to show you how the entire set-up works.

In a few other small projects, we try to readjust the hard dodger and how it fits onto our posts after we’ve chopped 5″ off them to make room for a flexible solar panel. We’re left with sharper angles for the pads and a lot of scratching our heads, but luckily the good men at Grand Slam Aluminum know how to take good care of us.

Last but not least, we get to properly install our captain’s chair at the nav station once our 2.5″ post has had brackets welded in to secure it to the floor and a bulkhead. Our first real area to sit in the pilot house. 🙂

Cheers from the work yard!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming. To join the Patreon ranks, please visit http://www.patreon.com/mjsailing

There’s no new paint to show off this week as the sanding is taking me *forever*, so instead I decided to follow Matt around to see what keeps him busy everyday while I work on the cabin top.

Also, there’s a long awaited tour of our interior for you to see. As we clean up the boat to show it off to my parents coming in to visit, we thought it would be a great chance to show it off to you too. It’s a long way from being finished, but at least it should give you a good idea of what it might become.

Cheers from the work yard!

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming. To join the Patreon ranks, please visit http://www.patreon.com/mjsailing

After 10 months of waiting and one failed attempt, our mast is finally back up again!

Back in Episode 9 you’ll see that we tried to raise our mast, but the new rigging we ordered was not the right size, and we had to bring it back to have it redone. A few month and one weird encounter later, we have it in our hands again and can turn ourselves into a sailboat.

Jessica continues her work on getting the cabin top ready for new Awl Grip paint, after removing the Petit EZ Poxy that had been applied only a year ago.

Matt works on other projects that are best finished while still in the yard, like varnishing all our trim for the interior. Although everyone is working hard, it’s Jessica that makes a break for it with a day at the beach with a few girlfriends.

Cheers from the work yard!
Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming. To join the Patreon ranks, please visit http://www.patreon.com/mjsailing

Ever wonder what we do with our lives while we’re not busy with boat projects?

In this video we give you a look at a few of the things we do when the cameras are normally off, like trying to find the best shower stall at the end of a workday, cooking dinner in our galley, and enjoying a beautiful sunset from our cockpit.

It may be a far cry from the normal cruising life we hope to resume shortly, but we make the best of what we have while we have it.

Thank you *so* much to everyone who left comments or question about what they would like to know about our life on the hard. Since there were a lot of items we were not able to get to, we’ve put together a separate Q&A video, which you can find the link to here.

Thank you SO MUCH to our Patrons. These charitable souls help keep us in the work yard, our camera equipment up to date, and the videos coming. To join the Patreon ranks, please visit http://www.patreon.com/mjsailing